How Martha Stewart Incorporates Apples Into Every Part Of A Meal

If apple cider is your favorite seasonal flavor, then Martha Stewart has good news for you. On the latest episode of her Roku Channel series "Martha Cooks," Stewart makes not one but three recipes starring a variety of the fall fruits, which she just so happens to grow on her personal farm. Two of these recipes — a tender pork roast with apples and a Brioche and Apple Bread Pudding – are simple enough to recreate at home with a little patience and some quality ingredients.

The main course of Stewart's apple-centric meal is a bone-in pork loin roasted with a freshly made onion paste, salt, pepper, thyme, and olive oil. Half-way through cooking, the roast is removed from the oven and a handful of halved apples with butter and white wine are added to the roasting pan to cook alongside it and add a burst of flavor.

For dessert, the dish of choice was Brioche and Apple Bread Pudding with fresh sliced apples and rum-soaked raisins. Stewart has made numerous variations of this dish over the years. According to a video the chef released in 2020, she made similar versions using apricots, dried currants, and orange juice. The version of the recipe featured on "Martha Cooks" mixes a variety of fresh apples with lemon juice and boozy raisins with homemade custard, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cubes of store-bought brioche to make an easy dessert that's a perfect fall or winter treat.

The final apple recipe that Stewart featured on "Martha Cooks" is a little more complicated for home cooks to replicate since it requires some incredibly specialized equipment, a lot of upper arm strength, and an excessive amount of apples. If you have access to your own apple trees though, as Stewart does, making homemade apple cider is a great way to create specialty cocktails. Martha and Thomas Joseph, Executive Vice President of Culinary at Martha Stewart Living and Martha's assistant for the episode, demonstrated how to use an apple grinder and press using a variety of fresh-picked apples to create their own apple cider.

Southern Living notes that apple cider is different from apple juice because it is unfiltered and often unpasteurized, which means it is best served and sold fresh, as opposed to apple juice, which can be found all year because it is more processed. This also means it is usually sweeter and smoother. 

Once the apples have been ground up, pressed, and filtered through layers of cheesecloth, Stewart blends the drink with lemon juice and bourbon in a sugar-rimmed glass to make a bourbon cider cocktail, complete with homemade cider ice cubes to keep the drink from getting watered down. If you want to try this at home, it may be advisable to find some high-quality fresh cider at the store, however, for the truly dedicated apple aficionados, you can buy fruit grinders and presses for several hundred dollars on Amazon.